Re: Bugboys mission
Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2015 7:01 pm
Box Hill/Headley Heath 15/4/15 part 2
Like I said yesterday, there was a bit of a theme developing. Brimstones kept leaping out at me, males patroling and females searching for Buckthorn. I can honestly say I have never seen so many in one day, easily outnumbered any other species, yes even Peacocks which is a first for me this year! With the lack of anything else flying around I started pointing my camera that any that past by, snapping randomly and hoping some came out in focus: Getting to Headley Heath shortly after 12 the first butterfly I saw was..... A couple of Peacocks later a little silvery blue flash darted in front of me and settled on a dried cow pat on the path allowing me to take a short break from yellow and pale lime! He buggered off after just a few snaps and so off I went.
The reason for the Headley Heath visit was to check out the potential for Dukes but on that front it would seem fruitless, seems we can write that of as a Duke site now sadly. Nevertheless it is a very pleasent site and does seem to have an extremely healthy population of Brimstones! Came across a fair few females searching out Buckthorn which enabled me to stand and point the camera at them, in the end I had taken about 150 pics of them. The exposure and focus is rather hit and miss and after binning most of them and tweaking the remaining I now possess more photo's of Brimstones in 2015 than all previous years combined. One female was particularly accomidating in being obsessed with a twig that must have tasted a bit like Buckthorn....but not quite: I'm sure you're all bored of Brimstones now
As I said I was initially after Dukes and I did have a momentary fleeting excuse to get very excited when a smallish orangy brown thing fluttered by. I followed it but quickly decided it's fluttery flight was not how I have read dukes fly and when it landed I saw that it was actually a moth, an Orange Underwing Archiearis parthenias. Got just one picture but he took of just as I hit the shutter: Back to Box Hill and yet more Brimstones. I noticed that the males were now spending quite a bit of time nosing around high up in Ivy, I thought initially looking for roosting spots but as it was still bright and very warm and they were still patroling I wondered whether females roost earlier in the day and they were searching for them? I came tantilisingly close to getting my first Orange Tip picture but he didn't sit quite long enough. There are vast swathes of Cuckoo Flower there so if you want an Orange Tip encounter it's certainly the place to be in a couple of weeks! So another long day butterflying with a minimum of 20 Brimstones seen, 2 Orange Tip males, 12 Peacocks, 5 Small Tortoiseshells, 1 Holly Blue and 2 Green Veined Whites in total.
Like I said yesterday, there was a bit of a theme developing. Brimstones kept leaping out at me, males patroling and females searching for Buckthorn. I can honestly say I have never seen so many in one day, easily outnumbered any other species, yes even Peacocks which is a first for me this year! With the lack of anything else flying around I started pointing my camera that any that past by, snapping randomly and hoping some came out in focus: Getting to Headley Heath shortly after 12 the first butterfly I saw was..... A couple of Peacocks later a little silvery blue flash darted in front of me and settled on a dried cow pat on the path allowing me to take a short break from yellow and pale lime! He buggered off after just a few snaps and so off I went.
The reason for the Headley Heath visit was to check out the potential for Dukes but on that front it would seem fruitless, seems we can write that of as a Duke site now sadly. Nevertheless it is a very pleasent site and does seem to have an extremely healthy population of Brimstones! Came across a fair few females searching out Buckthorn which enabled me to stand and point the camera at them, in the end I had taken about 150 pics of them. The exposure and focus is rather hit and miss and after binning most of them and tweaking the remaining I now possess more photo's of Brimstones in 2015 than all previous years combined. One female was particularly accomidating in being obsessed with a twig that must have tasted a bit like Buckthorn....but not quite: I'm sure you're all bored of Brimstones now
As I said I was initially after Dukes and I did have a momentary fleeting excuse to get very excited when a smallish orangy brown thing fluttered by. I followed it but quickly decided it's fluttery flight was not how I have read dukes fly and when it landed I saw that it was actually a moth, an Orange Underwing Archiearis parthenias. Got just one picture but he took of just as I hit the shutter: Back to Box Hill and yet more Brimstones. I noticed that the males were now spending quite a bit of time nosing around high up in Ivy, I thought initially looking for roosting spots but as it was still bright and very warm and they were still patroling I wondered whether females roost earlier in the day and they were searching for them? I came tantilisingly close to getting my first Orange Tip picture but he didn't sit quite long enough. There are vast swathes of Cuckoo Flower there so if you want an Orange Tip encounter it's certainly the place to be in a couple of weeks! So another long day butterflying with a minimum of 20 Brimstones seen, 2 Orange Tip males, 12 Peacocks, 5 Small Tortoiseshells, 1 Holly Blue and 2 Green Veined Whites in total.